Abilkhan Kasteev

Biography

In 1929 the twenty-five-year-old Abilkhan Kasteev enrolled in the evening classes of Nikolai Gavrilovich Khludov’s art studio in Alma-Ata and went there three times a week. He knew no Russian at all. Two students interpreted for him: Abil Daldenbaev, later the head of a school in Narynkol, and Nurgazy Orazymbetov.

Almost thirty years later Orazymbetov, by then chief architect of Alma-Ata, would build to his own design a house for the man he had once interpreted for.

Kasteev was born on 1 (14) January 1904 in the aul of Chizhin, or Shizhin, near Dzharkent in the Semirechye region; today this is the Almaty region. His family belonged to the Suan tribe of the Senior Zhuz. Little is known of his childhood and youth before Khludov’s studio. In 1930 he married Sakysh.

Khludov taught him in 1929–1931, and in 1934–1937, with the support of Temirbek Zhurgenov, Kasteev continued his studies in Moscow, at the art studio named after N. K. Krupskaya. His pictures of the 1930s are about the new life of the Kazakh aul and about old customs: “Cotton Harvest” (1935), “Collective Farm Dairy” and “Milking Mares” (both 1936), “The Purchased Bride” (1938), “Abduction of the Bride”, “Collective Farm Toi”. He also painted portraits: of Amangeldy Imanov, Kenesary Kasymov, Abai, Chokan Valikhanov, Zhambyl, and his own mother.

According to his daughters, he worked mostly in watercolour and used oil chiefly for commissioned pictures. His son Nurtas, also an artist, went with him as a student assistant on working trips to Kostanai, Rudny, Kokshetau and other industrial centres, where his father drew building sites and new industries. Hence the landscapes marked by their time: “Medeu High-Mountain Skating Rink” (1954), “Golden Grain” (1960), “Aksai Quarry” (1967), “Turksib” (1969), “Talas Valley” (1970), “Kapchagai Hydroelectric Station” (1972). The watercolour series “In the Land of Kazakhstan” won him the Chokan Valikhanov State Prize of the Kazakh SSR in 1967. How many pictures he painted in all is hard to say: figures given range from “more than a thousand” works in oil and watercolour to two thousand by 1958. I would not choose between them. His works are in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Museum of Oriental Art in Moscow, and many are kept in Alma-Ata.

In 1942 Kasteev became an Honoured Art Worker of the Kazakh SSR, and in 1944 a People’s Artist of the republic. In 1954–1956 he headed the Union of Artists of Kazakhstan, and he was a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh SSR of the 4th to 6th convocations. He received the Order of the Red Banner of Labour in January 1959, in connection with the ten-day festival of Kazakh art and literature in Moscow; his awards also included the Order of the October Revolution and the Badge of Honour. For a long time the family had no home of its own, and only in the mid-1940s was it given a two-room flat on Seifullin Street, where Mukhtar Auezov’s family had lived before. In 1958, on Kunaev’s instructions, a house was built for Kasteev, and in 1968 a studio was added to it. Among the guests of the Kasteevs were Mukhtar Auezov, Sabit Mukanov, Nurgisa Tlendiev, the dancer Shara Zhienkulova, and the artists Ural Tansykbaev from Uzbekistan and Gapar Aitiev from Kirghizia.

Kasteev died on 2 November 1973 in Alma-Ata and was buried in the Kensai cemetery. In 1984 the State Museum of Arts of Kazakhstan, where many of his works are kept and shown, was named after him. In 2004 UNESCO marked his centenary together with that of the academician Alkei Margulan, and a postage stamp and a 50-tenge commemorative coin were issued for the anniversary; in 2009 a monument was put up in front of the art college in Shymkent that bears his name, and in 2014 the Kasteev House Museum opened in Alma-Ata.